The Binding of Alice
by FeeptheNinja
Summary: A collection of oneshots.
1. Bad End

The girls sat in darkness, huddled together, trying so hard to quiet themselves, trying so hard to hide. Both their minds and hearts were racing as they tried to straighten their thoughts; had she seen them, could she hear them? She couldn't possibly, Marisa thought. They had been inside Alice's toy chest almost a whole minute before Alice's mommy had stormed into the room, and they hadn't made a peep since.

Almost. Alice had started crying after her mom began shouting, but all she'd let out was a scared squeak before grabbing Marisa's hand and squeezing hard. She knew she needed to be quiet, or something much, much worse than yelling would happen.

**_"ALICE!"_**

There was a loud thud outside, like something heavy got pushed over. Alice's bed? Marisa was suddenly glad they decided to hide in the chest instead, although now she couldn't help but worry that Alice's mom would knock over the chest, too.

**_"A-LICE!"_**

The smaller blonde shuddered and pulled in closer to Marisa, grabbing the other girl around the torso and hiding her face in her shoulder like she wanted to disappear. Marisa didn't blame her. Alice's mommy was just as scary as Marisa's daddy.

Stomping footsteps circled the room, pausing only to throw aside another piece of furniture, every once in a while. Marisa thought she could hear her mutter some bad words under her breath, too, when she wasn't screaming for Alice to come out from her hiding spot.

Her breath hitched a bit when she heard the footsteps draw right beside the chest, and Marisa's arms very quickly found their way around Alice in turn. Her heartbeat grew so loud in her ears she was _certain_ Alice's mama could hear it and after everything they'd been through was she going to find them _now?_

And then, the door slammed.

Both girls froze.

Did she... leave?

Marisa pressed her ear to the side of the chest. She couldn't hear any footsteps, or yelling, or bad words. She held her breath, and listened as carefully as she possibly could, straining her ears to catch every last little sound... and...

... nothing.

She was gone.

Both girls let out a relieved breath, releasing the tension in their tiny bodies, Alice giggling a little through the last of her terrified tears because they'd _done_ it, they'd finally done it, they were home free now; out Alice's window they would go and away to somewhere new, somewhere without demons in the basement and worse upstairs. Marisa put her hands up to the lid of the chest and began to push.

And push.

And push some more.

The lid wouldn't open.

Alice stopped laughing.

Marisa stared upwards at the lid in utter disbelief, before hesitantly putting a hand up to the top and pushing again. Nothing. Harder. Nothing. She _slammed_ both hands against the top again and again and again and still _nothing._

It was locked.

Both realized they must have missed the tiny, vital click of a key. Marisa's hands found their way to the sealed seam of the chest, scraping her fingers across the wood in the hopes of finding some way to pry it open, any way to pry it open, but she found none. She wasn't strong enough to break it open, out here. They didn't have any bombs that weren't pretend (and besides, it was a really bad idea to put one right next to them) and a key wouldn't help from the inside.

They came to the second realization that the air was starting to get heavy, and Alice started to cry again.

End of the line.

Marisa tried to reassure her best friend (only friend) that they were going to be okay, that there was _some_ way they would get out of this, that someone would let them out, that this wasn't really _it_, and she realized there was water dripping down her _own_ face, and she gave up trying, grabbed Alice's hand.

She hadn't really thought about... going away like this before, what it would be like. She was sure - pretty sure - kind of sure - she hoped beating up the Devil had given her back her soul, because Alice looked so scared and Marisa didn't like the idea that she would be going all by _herself._

She didn't think Alice should be so scared about going to Heaven anyway, but she didn't say so, because she didn't want Alice to cry any more, and she was_ tired_, so she laid down in the bottom of the chest and so did Alice.

And okay, Marisa was scared too, she admitted, but not about going to Hell, because she was pretty sure she wasn't going anyway and she wasn't scared of that green-haired liar, but she thinks said liar might be mad at her for hitting her _so many times_ in that fight and also for stealing some stuff, so she might make her do harder things than bad kids usually had to do, like jumping jacks for ten years or something. Alice giggles when she says that, and smiles, and says she'd come visit her if she went somewhere else, and that she'd bring her chocolate too, because there had to be chocolate in Heaven, right?

So Marisa laughs too, and she feels dizzy and her chest hurts, like she was holding her breath too long, but she wasn't, she was breathing but that just makes it hurt more and she doesn't know what to do so she rolls closer to Alice who's breathing funny too, and she's warm and it makes her feel a little better.

She's _really_ sleepy now, and she mumbles that Alice's mom could have at least sung them a lullaby or something, and she knows there's something _really_ wrong when Alice still giggles very quietly even though Marisa just mentioned her scary mom. Marisa wonders if going makes you laugh, or something, for a minute until she realizes that Alice stopped laughing and she looks asleep but her belly is _heaving_ up and down, up and down, and Marisa starts crying again and decides going away does not make you laugh.

She buries her face in Alice's hair because she likes how she smells (better than old air), and closes her eyes because she doesn't want to watch her best friend in the world _die_, and she shudders because she feels cold but Alice is still warm?

She wants to fall asleep before Alice's belly stops moving, so she hugs very tight to Alice, and thinks about God for a second because even though she was making jokes she really, really doesn't want to go to Hell and she doesn't want Alice to be alone, so she lets out a breath, and she stops trying to be awake and she falls into black, and maybe she is dreaming about Alice and being outside and seeing the sun and being happy.

They do not die quickly, but they die together.


	2. Specters

Lost in space, she watched the children play rough and tumble with each other and their playmates, and tried to think about what came to mind when she saw them doing as they did.

Innocence, that was the word. They had a certain kind of... innocence about them.

Not enough for being five, that was for sure - and about all the wrong things. Death, betrayal, abuse, horrors beyond horrors had graced their unknowing eyes. The Devil herself had whispered in their ears, and at least one of them had been receptive to her wicked proposals; they'd killed themselves in all but reality and no longer feared brandishing a knife, building a bomb, killing one or two or fifty if they needed to do so to live.

So, perhaps innocence really, most definitely _wasn't_ the word.

Fearless? No, they still were scared of the things small children became worried over - things under the bed, the dark, the thunder, getting lost. Again, all they were fearless about were the completely wrong things, things adults should yet still be unable to stomach in advanced experience.

Although, she mused, they didn't seem to worry about the typical monsters-of-the-unknown, for if they did, they would surely fear the specters that hung about them. Oh, certainly they were... kind enough, especially towards the young ones, but they were_ horrific_ in appearance, if not character. And this horror should have struck home hardest in the children; after all, the shades were nothing more than twisted mockeries of the ones they'd loved most, kept from true death by their mutual devotion, eternally stuck in the gruesome body their soul inhabited in its last moments.

Yet Sendai's gaping, withered, eyeless face, harboring flies, belly eaten out with organs dragging limply behind her, stirred no worries in Reimu; the lovely golden-haired woman, young mother, closed eyes, light smile, forever trapped in childbirth and gushing ghostly gore upon the ground, was utterly adored by Marisa (who was again attached to the spirit as a newborn would be, when it was around); and all four of Alice's sisters, who had perished in various terrible ways - the severing of limbs, frozen, burnt to a crisp - were welcome company to the blonde child, who never minded the charcoal or blood or otherworldly fluids that smeared into her face and clothes when she clung close to the girls that, according to all the children's accounts, had loved her most.

The children had recognized the ghosts as 'mommy' and 'sister' before the thought of 'monster' ever crossed their minds, and little would dissuade them from that line of thinking - so these nightmarish creatures had then become a near-omnipresent source of companionship to the young ones; appearing when needed or wanted, still sweet and coddling and _loving_ despite their condition, and disappearing when their focus moved (as childrens' attention tended to do) elsewhere.

Rather than fear these persistent apparitions, they'd grown attached to them in turn. Hugs and kisses were still in order, as were games - Yukari had caught at least one of the girls calmly nestled in her beloved "family"'s arms one morning, sleeping as peacefully as anything. As with most ghosts, they appeared to be able to be as solid as they liked, which also led to the girls hitching piggyback rides quite often; two of them also seemed fond of... kangaroo rides, as terrible as it sounded - and looked.

She had tried hard to convince herself that these were no worse than imaginary friends; no miko was around to exorcise the beasts, after all, and removing these most loved shades from the lives of the fragile children... well... it didn't seem wise, not yet, at least. And they had insisted that the specters protected them from harm; had shred right through terrifying beasts that would have had their hide if not for mama, if not for onee-chan.

But that was what chilled her to the bone. Sendai's husk, at least, did not give two flying cares about Yukari's sudden surrogate parenthood; that was the plan they had made in life, after all, and Sendai was now very much dead. In fact, her calm demeanor around the infamous boundary youkai was what informed her that the specter really was her old friend, merely bereft of life - an impostor would have tensed, flinched, growled, but Sendai, as she always had, remained markedly cool.

But the others had not made such deals about their children, their loved ones. They likely either didn't know who Yukari _was_, or worse yet, they _did_ and, more likely than not, weren't exactly fans; and she'd seen and felt the deathly cold stares aimed towards her when the girls weren't watching. They were no impostors, oh no - no worry about being ousted as a tanuki, a nue. They were very real, with one simple purpose, and nothing they could lose by launching themselves headlong into a fight to the death because, after all, one couldn't die twice.

They'd torn through hell, high water, and Satan herself to keep their wards safe.

What on God's green earth would they do if they felt their little loves were in danger now?


	3. The Lamb

Marisa really, honestly, wanted to die.

Which was sort of funny, really, because she used to _not_ want to die. In fact, she used to _not_ want to die _so badly_ she jumped into the basement. _So badly,_ she sold her soul to the Devil. _So very badly,_ she'd killed her dad.

In self-defense, the Devil said.

Because she was a demon, she said to herself.

Which she was. If she wasn't before already (because that green-haired sinner told her that she saved her from being dead like her mommy before she was even born), she certainly was now - two curled ram's horns had sprouted from her skull and her head still throbbed. A bloody cross carved into her forehead, claws and teeth like her puppy's but bigger and somehow sharper, dark gray skin that was so tough not even the sharp rocks on the ground could cut it. She'd turned into a horrid -looking little beast, and she felt she rather deserved it.

She curled a little on the ground.

Her friends were nowhere to be seen in this dark room; she didn't know how long it had been since she'd been thrown down into this pit (probably because she'd attacked the person who gave her all her power) to stumble blindly and acquaint her face with the walls and the floor and all the creatures she couldn't see, but could certainly feel - maggots chewing on her feet, flies smacking into her head and the back of her throat when she'd opened her mouth to yell, spiders crawling on her and the worms popping up and tripping her. They probably all weren't very happy she'd killed so many of their friends, and so after awhile she just didn't bother to get up anymore. It didn't matter if she got up anymore anyway.

Not even the sharp little fangs of the monsters surrounding her could pierce her new hide, however, and soon enough they began to migrate away from the warm little lump on the ground. Since she wasn't moving and couldn't be eaten, she simply wasn't interesting, and soon enough, Marisa was left alone in the dark again.

Her belly yawned, as it had been doing, on and off, for about a year, and the little girl wished she would starve to death.


	4. Dead Cat

Signing her life away.

Alice sat up, awake, intermittently staring at the bloodstained walls and then back to her cat. Dead cat. _Very_ dead cat. Her tail was still missing, she noted, unsure whether to be displeased or relieved, because she was not the person who found the pieces of her cat.

Marisa was the one who found them, when she walked - alone - into the obsidian door frame that appeared every once in awhile, and came back out with some new, powerful horror she had obtained courtesy of the Devil.

Who was also apparently selling pieces of Alice's cat.

Dead cat.

Which was mildly confusing to say the least. When it was alive, said cat did not act demonically in the least - in fact it actively avoided her mother (Alice thought it might have been psychic), so no easy answer could come to mind as to why the sinner to end them all was offering pieces of her cat for pieces of her friend's immortal soul.

In fact, she wasn't entirely sure how the Devil had gotten her hands on the pieces of her cat in the _first_ place, given that they had been stashed in a box under Alice's bed ever since she found them one morning. The only reasonable explanation for _that_ was that her mother had given the bits and pieces of the dismembered cat, personally, to the Devil, which by this point didn't sound so very farfetched.

Alright, so, disregarding the enigma of how the cat even got down here in the first place.

The child sighed and adjusted how she was sitting against the wall, and wondered briefly just how her friends could stand to sleep in a place like this. They'd literally just finished killing five horrific, half-petrified brain-monsters - their innards (of which they seemed to have a lot) were still _warm_, not to mention splattered on every surface in the room. And they'd just looked at each other, laid down in one of the few relatively blood-free spots in the room, and passed out.

Right there.

Alice could _hear_ the snarls and groans of horrible things from beyond the two other doorways in the room - wide open, but the creatures in this hellish basement didn't seem to have grasped the concept of doors yet, thank you, God - and still she sat there, not exactly wanting to wake up her exhausted friends but quickly becoming too terrified to keep from wetting the floor. Which might not actually wake them up, seeing how they were sleeping through everything else.

To keep herself from having a mild nervous breakdown, she looked back down at her cat.

_Very_ dead cat.

Why had Marisa been signing her soul away for pieces of a dead cat?

It wasn't even Marisa's cat. She wasn't even keeping the pieces to use. She'd come out of those rooms with a carving in her chest or her forehead or blood dripping from her eyes or bloody _horns_ growing from her head (and that one time she just caught a cold), and other times she'd come out holding... a cat's paw or a fly-filled head, and she'd look pleased as punch as she handed it to Alice so they could go on their merry way.

Digging herself into Hell for literally nothing. Nothing that could help save her from these horrid monsters; nothing that could keep her alive for another few hours. Just Alice's best friend, digging herself deeper, dealing with the Devil and grinning all the while, for nothing at all.

Okay, so maybe this wasn't helping with the nervous breakdown part.

* * *

Marisa rolled to the side a bit, semi-roused from her (much needed and much appreciated) nap by the stifled sounds of... crying. Not an unusual sound - you cried or died down here - but this sounded a little bit less like a 'please god don't let me die' sob and more like a...

A...

Okay, she didn't know. But it was different, and she was now curious, so ignoring her body's annoyed complaints, she pushed herself to a sitting position and looked around, eyes still bleary, to see what exactly was the matter-

Oh.

"... uh, Alice?" She rubbed at one of her eyes with the heel of her hand - grinding dirt and blood and some other disgusting things into it, but she couldn't really care less - and stared at her friend, who was half-curled against the wall with the mostly-intact body of her cat and quietly /sobbing/.

"... Alice, y'know, those zombie-things are dead. Y' can stop cryin'." She crawled over to the whimpering blonde, poked her in the side. "Alice, c'mon. What's wrong?"

* * *

Alice thought _frantically_ of some way to reassure herself that her friend would be fine. There had to be some loophole in those stupid deals, right? There always was. Maybe if she gave back the cat (maybe the Devil just liked cats?), Marisa could have what she traded for them back as well? No, that wouldn't be enough, and it wasn't like they could trade back the carvings. Where were they going? To Hell, right? It was _down,_ right?

"Alice?"

And the Devil lived in Hell. They'd killed things scarier than the Devil by now. It should be easy, comparatively, right?

"Uh, Alice?"

_Right. _They were going to kill the Devil, then. They'd killed Mom, they'd killed Marisa's Dad, they'd killed a dead baby (somehow) and quite a few live ones and the Horsemen of the Apocalypse and some god-doesn't-even-know-what-HORRORS and the Devil had just made it to the very top of her hit list.

"... Al-"

Her head abruptly snapped up to meet Marisa's rather surprised face.

"If you die before we get to Hell, I'll kill you!"

Marisa blinked. Pulled her head back a bit.

"Er... if... you say so? Um, are you... okay, Alice?"

Alice stared at the other blonde. She... looked really worried, and it was only now that Alice realized she had been crying. Had she woken her up?

"Sorry." She said, quickly scrubbing at her cheeks with the back of her hands, wiping away the water before it balled up and hit anything of its own accord. "I-I'm alright."

"... are you sure?" Marisa tilted her head to the side, the sixes-mark on her forehead peeking out from behind her scruffy bangs. "You sounded kinda upset."

"I'm okay, okay?" The other girl slumped down the wall until her head met the floor. "... I'm just tired."

"Oh. Then you should probably take a nap while we're here anyway..." Marisa was curled back up before her sentence was even finished.

"I know."

"Then go to sleep."

"I'm trying..."


	5. The Basement Game

Marisa contemplated the doorknob from her rather low vantage point.

The door this particular doorknob was attached to, when opened, would lead to the basement of her new house. It was a Saturday, it was raining like mad, her new mom's pets were all busy and her friends - er, sisters? - had also busied themselves with what Marisa considered to be the most boring board game on the face of the planet.

Therefore, she'd gone to try and entertain herself, and after some thinking, she'd decided on... this. It couldn't be any worse than being bored, right? _Anything_ was better than being bored - Marisa simply couldn't stand waiting for _anything,_ much less having to wait for something to occupy herself. And after all, her new mom hadn't put the basement off limits or anything. Yet.

Clutching her precious pentagram pendant in her right hand, she turned the doorknob and darted down the stairs.

* * *

Marisa contemplated the locked doorknob from her rather low vantage point.

Okay, so _now_ there was a rule about going to the basement. She probably shouldn't have taken those few extra hits from The Fallen; the blood on her shirt had worried her new mother more than the little tears in her clothing, the few cuts on her face. There were bandaids and patches for a reason, but being soaked in half-a-gallon of blood?

Of course, she wasn't sorry at all. She'd gotten pretty far into Sheol before she'd been spooked by a few Hollows, and run upstairs to safety - and a reprimanding, but safety nonetheless. It had been the most fun she'd had in weeks, and she wasn't about to let a new padlock stop her from playing the game she'd become so acquainted with.

Alice wouldn't come down and play with her, though. Or Reimu. She was a little disappointed, but it wasn't like she couldn't make her own fun. Maybe she'd find the little beggar and talk to him instead.

She reached up to the doorknob with a paper-clip in hand.

* * *

Marisa stared up at the double-locked doorknob from her rather low vantage point.

She'd gotten in a lot of trouble last time she came back up. She didn't blame her mom; she'd been pretty beat-up. She'd even felt a little sick, but that might have come from drinking that sour syrup. _No more playing down there!_ was the ultimatum. _It's not safe!_

Pish. She was stronger than she looked. Down there, she was a godling. She was powerful beyond reason and sanity - and it was absolutely awesome! And besides, she couldn't just stop going _now._ She'd made a new friend down there, a real one, two even. Not beggars that could barely squeak and smile. _Real_ friends, two boys playing the basement game together - a boy with an eyepatch (whom she'd had to fight for treasure), and a kinda-quiet kid with the book of the Devil. They'd played together yesterday, and gotten through the Cathedral; they were tough, for sure, and Marisa liked playing with them. She had patiently tried to explain this to her mother, but she was pretty sure she thought Marisa had been imagining them, because when Mommy went down in the basement, she didn't see what they did.

She'd told Reimu and Alice, too, and Reimu finally looked interested in coming with her, which was what really excited her. As much as she liked making new friends, she liked her old friends best.

She stood on a stool to reach the child-proof grip on the knob, with a new bent-up paper-clip she had found in the drawer.

* * *

Marisa didn't even know where the doorknob _went._

... she'd gotten grounded for a week after that. A shame, because she'd met a new kid even Alice seemed excited to hear about; a girl this time, named Eve, as she'd found out. Kinda mean at first, but she was alright. It helped that she could _rampage_ when things got tough, too. Marisa had been impressed.

She wasn't even all that banged-up when she'd scooted back up the stairs after an ill-fated encounter with War; scraped knees and hands, and a little blood smeared in her hair, but honestly she hadn't been hurt hardly at all. After two days, she had deduced that Mommy had been mad about her breaking the rules. Even though she'd had a perfectly good reason for it, which she'd explained, for a second time, at length.

She was all antsy from being cooped up for a week, and now the doorknob was just straight-up _gone._ Which felt a little unfair, not even giving her a chance to pick the locks. She thought that if Mommy didn't want her to get in, she should have come up with a better lock instead of just getting rid of the handle entirely, because that was more sporting and also way more fun.

She frowned, and glanced at Reimu, who had decided to come along with her this time; bringing her old mommy's shirt and big stick with her, things she'd had the whole time, back when the basement was less of a game and more of a bother. Reimu looked just about as blank on the matter of how to get in as Marisa was, which worried her; until she'd suggested that the both of them push on it.

You would think a couple of little girls wouldn't be strong enough to force a door open, but that day Marisa learned she was a lot stronger than she thought she was, even when she wasn't playing the basement game.

* * *

Yukari just didn't know what the hell to do anymore.

Coming home to find the basement door forced in was one thing; finding two of her girls hiding under the kotatsu in the living room was another; hearing that they'd _both_, once again, broken one of the few household rules was immediate grounding. Again.

She _knew_ Reimu had come across the concept of rules before; she'd visited Sendai (when she was still among the living) before and it seemed like she'd disciplined Reimu just fine. Marisa, from what she'd been told by the girl herself and her 'nii-chan' (that half-youkai shopkeep), _did_ have rules in her old household, but she'd clearly regarded them as mere suggestions at best even then - and now she might possibly hold them in even more contempt, the boundary youkai reminded herself, as those rules the child had found silly and stupid had caused her father's ultimate attempt on her life. To a girl who didn't, or couldn't, understand the value of (haha) firm boundaries, it might seem like the boundaries themselves had caused her father to go half-mad.

She was a bit surprised, in fact, that _Alice_ had not broken the basement rule yet - having no rules in her former home to speak of, though she did seem scared of the very thought of the basement, that might explain it. But being so attached to Marisa and Reimu as she was - and being the youngest of the three - she had expected tagalong syndrome to have occured by now. Or at least, it was going to occur _soon_ \- she could hear, from the children's playroom, an animated tale being told to the one left out of the adventure, and, she noted with some displeasure, the youngest girl seemed _quite_ interested.

_Why did they keep going down there?_

Yukari would have thought the sheer trauma of their ordeal would have kept them out of there for years, not merely a few months. Marisa had continually referred to it as a game when she'd asked about it, some sort of pretend game. Of course, she'd never heard of a pretend game that magically manifested cuts, bruises, and gallons of _blood_ out of nowhere, so she was taking the explanation with a few grains of salt. Perhaps the girls had some latent ability they were using to manifest their rather disturbing ideas? A better explanation, and it could also explain the other children Marisa - and now Reimu - were claiming to have been playing with.

A game. And Marisa had gone first - she had been reported missing for a _year_ before she'd shown up (with Alice) at Yukari's door. A year of Hell the child had admitted to going through herself, and she was chomping at the bit to _get back at it?_

The little one had an explanation for that, too, as she tended to have for just about anything. The bad guys, she'd said, were all dead or gone. The mother, the father, the Devil, the copies - all gone. The _monsters,_ those were still there, but they were dumb. Basically animals with a bit more bite. _Those,_ the children could handle fighting. It was challenging, but they could do it, and the only fear they had was occasionally their frightful appearance; they couldn't plan anything, didn't want to kill them and only them. They'd eat anything you threw at them.

This was generally where the conversation would derail to a few choice monsters that had real brains, but kind of stayed away mostly and even were a bit helpful sometimes - and then Yukari would send the children to bed because it was late, and also because she had gotten the picture. Whatever was chasing them had been expunged from their frightening little fantasy, leaving only the _game_ behind.

Yukari sighed.

In a week, when the latest grounding was over, she had a feeling she was going to have to supervise the children in the basement for a few hours. Perhaps she could figure out how to see what they could, while she was at it. It might even be helpful for something _other_ than keeping everyone's sanity afloat.

As it stood today, it was about time to make dinner.


End file.
